.TH ab 1 "March 1998"
.\" $Id: ab.8,v 1.6 1999/04/07 14:51:43 martin Exp $
.\" Copyright (c) 1998-1999 The Apache Group. All rights reserved.
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.\" modification, are permitted provided that the following conditions
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.\"    software must display the following acknowledgment:
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.\" This software consists of voluntary contributions made by many
.\" individuals on behalf of the Apache Group and was originally based
.\" on public domain software written at the National Center for
.\" Supercomputing Applications, University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign.
.\" For more information on the Apache Group and the Apache HTTP server
.\" project, please see <http://www.apache.org/>.
.SH NAME
ab \- Apache HTTP server benchmarking tool
.SH SYNOPSIS
.B ab 
[
.B \-k
] [
.BI \-n " requests"
] [
.BI \-t " timelimit"
] [
.BI \-c " concurrency"
] [
.BI \-p " POST file"
] [
.BI \-A " Authenticate username:password"
] [
.BI \-P " Proxy Authenticate username:password"
] [
.BI \-H " Custom header"
] [
.BI \-C " Cookie name=value"
] [
.BI \-T " content-type"
] [
.BI \-v " verbosity"
]
] [
.BI \-w " output HTML"
]
] [
.BI \-x " <table> attributes"
]
] [
.BI \-y " <tr> attributes"
]
] [
.BI \-z " <td> attributes"
]
.I [http://]hostname[:port]/path 

.B ab
[
.B \-V
] [
.B \-h 
]
.PP
.SH DESCRIPTION
.B ab
is a tool for benchmarking your Apache HyperText Transfer Protocol (HTTP)
server. It is designed to give you an impression on how performant is your
current Apache installation.  This especially shows you how much requests per
time your Apache installation is capable to serve. 
.PP
.SH OPTIONS
.TP 12
.B \-k 
Enable the HTTP KeepAlive feature, i.e. perform multiple requests within one
HTTP session instead. Default is no KeepAlive.
.TP 12
.BI \-n " requests"
Number of requests to perform for the benchmarking session.  The default is to
just perform one single request which usually leads to not very representative
benchmarking results.
.TP 12
.BI \-t " timelimit"
Seconds to max. spend for benchmarking. This implies
a 
.B \-n 
.B 50000
internally. Use this to benchmark the server within a fixed total amount of
time.  Per default there is no timelimit. 
.TP 12
.BI \-c " concurrency"
Number of multiple requests per time to perform. 
Default is one request per time.

.TP 12
.BI \-p " POST file"
File containing data to POST.

.TP 12
.BI \-A " Authorization username:password"
Supply BASIC Authentification credentials to the server. The username
and password are separated by a single ':' and send on the wire uuencoded.
The string is send regardless of wether the server needs it; (i.e. has
send an 401. Authentifcation needed).

.TP 12
.BI \-p " Proxy-Authorization username:password"
Supply BASIC Authentification credentials to a proxy en-route. The username
and password are separated by a single ':' and send on the wire uuencoded.
The string is send regardless of wether the proxy needs it; (i.e. has
send an 407 Proxy authentifcation needed).

.TP 12
.BI \-C " Cookie name=value"
Add a 'Cookie:' line to the request. The argument is typically in the form
of a 'name=value' pair. This field is repeatable.

.TP 12
.BI \-p " Header string"
Postfix extra headers to the request. The argument is typically in the form
of a valid header line; containing a colon separated field value pair. (i.e. 
'Accept-Encoding: zip/zop;8bit').

.TP 12
.BI \-T " content-type"
Content-type header to use for POST data.

.TP 12
.B \-v 
Set verbosity level - 4 and above prints information on headers, 3 and
above prints response codes (404, 200, etc.), 2 and above prints
warnings and info.

.TP 12
.BI \-w
Print out results in HTML tables.  Default table is two columns wide,
with a white background.
.TP 12
.BI \-x " attributes"
String to use as attributes for <table>.  Attributes are inserted
<table 
.B here
>
.TP 12
.BI \-y " attributes"
String to use as attributes for <tr>.
.TP 12
.BI \-z " attributes"
String to use as attributes for <td>.
.TP 12
.B \-V
Display version number and exit.
.TP 12
.B \-h 
Display usage information.
.PD
.SH BUGS
There are various statically declared buffers of fixed length. Combined
with the lazy parsing of the command line arguments, the response headers
from the server and other external inputs this might bite you.
.P
It does not implement HTTP/1.x fully; only accepts some 'expected' forms
of responses. The rather heavy use of 
.BR strstr(3)
shows up top in profile,
which might indicate a performance problem; i.e. you would measure the
.BR ab
performance rather than the server's.

.SH SEE ALSO
.BR httpd(8)
.
